Би-Би-Си в Нижнем-Дзержинске (10 лет спустя)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/multimedia/2012/02/120201_v_nizhny_protests.shtml

Communist rule

Forty minutes from Nizhny Novgorod, political change has already come.

Dzerzhinsk was the polluted heart of the Soviet chemical weapons programme. Although 70% of its chemical factories have now closed, vast clouds of smoke still fill the air and darkened river water betrays signs of the mercury and other pollutants which have seeped deep into the ground over the decades.

A poster at the entrance to the city features a green bear, with the slogan "Dzerzhinsk - United Russia's Favourite City".

It seems the feeling isn't reciprocated. Following December's parliamentary elections, the Communist Party holds power here - for the first time since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Travelling in one of the trams that first ran in Dzerzhinsk in the year he was born, 78-year-old retired engineer Valery Yunitsky told me why Vladimir Putin had lost his support.

He'd liked Putin when he was younger, but felt he'd lost touch with ordinary citizens and their concerns.

By voting for the communists, Valery assured me, he wasn't harking back to the past. If he had been given the choice, he would have liked to re-elect President Medvedev - but he was not.

Retired engineer Valery Yunitsky feels Mr Putin has lost touch with the people

"It was a protest vote," he explained. "And I'll do the same in the presidential election. If the communist candidate gets through to the second round, it will hopefully tell Putin that he needs to listen to the people."

The reasons for people's disaffection with Vladimir Putin may be varied, but - after years of unchallenged popularity - this disaffection is, in itself, a new and unpredictable political force in Russia.

It may not change the result of the presidential election, but it is already changing the relationship between the country's rulers and the ruled